The Sharethrough Exchange is growing rapidly and we’re adding in a constant stream of new DSP integrations allowing a growing number of programmatic buyers to purchase native ad inventory on Sharethrough's client base of over 1100 premium publishers. In Q4, Adform, the independent full-stack ad-tech platform, partnered with Sharethrough enabling programmatic native support through their DSP. In the following post, Adform talk about their approach to programmatic native and the opportunity they see in this technology.

Advertisers really want their content to resonate with consumers and ensure their ads are seen by targeted readers. This is exactly what’s possible with programmatic native advertising.

Native ads blend in with original content, allowing both advertisers and publishers to offer an immersive, yet user-friendly, ad experience. These non-intrusive advertising experiences are proven to be more effective at capturing consumers’ attention, making them increasingly sought out by advertisers.

According to the native advertising report published by the MMA, consumers spent 40 percent more time interacting with native ads than with standard ones, and when native ads appeared in a mobile environment, consumers gave mobile native ads three times more attention than standard ones.

For publishers, native advertising offers new monetization opportunities as well as the ability to deliver ads that will adopt the look and feel of their sites, for a less intrusive ad experience for the consumer.

Over the last two years, Adform has helped advertisers and publishers build custom native formats that enhance the user experience while simultaneously working to meet marketers’ need to combine their first-party data at scale.

Reaching audiences at scale with native advertising has challenged the industry until recently, when the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) released its OpenRTB 2.3 guidelines earlier this year, including standardization for native ads.

This standard has defined how advertisers and publishers should buy and sell native ads programmatically at scale, and eventually helped Adform include native ads in our real-time bidding ecosystem. The result is that we now offer our customers in-feed units through our Demand-Side Platform. In-feed native units are created to merge seamlessly with online content, with strong headlines able to grab attention as users scroll through (news) feeds.

In the following Q&A, Adform Product Director, Jurjen de Wal, talked about this new release, the future of programmatic mobile advertising and how Adform is innovating with consumer-friendly formats like programmatic native.

We believe this is a new way for advertisers to engage with their consumers, as native ads improve the consumer ad experience, especially on mobile, which is an extremely personal device. Non-obtrusive ads also do their part to stem ad-blocking downloads.

For publishers, native advertising offers new monetization opportunities as well as the ability to deliver ads that will adopt the look and feel of their sites, for a less intrusive ad experience for the consumer. Since native ad units take on the form and function of the site, the ads behave like the actual platform content, allowing publishers’ content to perform while making money from ad content on their sites.

Offering native solutions outside social platforms—and since Facebook sunset its Facebook Exchange–presents more opportunities to tell consistent stories across devices. Native formats are especially important as consumers spend more time on mobile devices, where video and native ad formats dominate.

Why is native advertising solving mobile advertising issues?

Native was pioneered by social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. On these platforms, the lion’s share of mobile advertising spend is going to in-feed social. Offering native solutions outside social platforms—and since Facebook sunset its Facebook Exchange–presents more opportunities to tell consistent stories across devices. Native formats are especially important as consumers spend more time on mobile devices, where video and native ad formats dominate.

How has DSP spend on mobile changed?

In Adform we’ve seen the spend for mobile programmatic advertising more than double every year. Currently total mobile advertising spend is still smaller than the Desktop display spend, but Mobile will become the leading channel in the months to come. This coincides with increasing demand for mobile video and mobile native (in-feed) formats.

Mobile video and native ad formats, together with mobile audience data (particularly location) will be catalyst for the mobile DSP spend in our platform. However, it won’t come automatically, there’s still a lot of education and evangelization needed to make agencies and advertisers comfortable, debunk “mobile myths” and help people embrace the mobile opportunities.

Will context relevancy be ignored in programmatic native?
Absolutely not. Publishers have full control over the final ad layout, where a native ad is deliberately designed to align with the content on their sites.

How can an advertisers customize the content and target a native ad in Adform?

Creating a native ad in our system is easy. The advertiser simply selects the native banner type; uploads the creative assets (such as a thumbnail or icon); and enters the ad headline, text description, and brand name. As for targeting possibilities, the advertiser can target by location, device, operating system, and contextual relevancy—exactly the same capabilities as for display banners in our system.

What big trends in mobile advertising do you predict for the rest of this year?

More and more focus on consumer friendly formats that are less intrusive and are purposely made for mobile. For example, vertical video which flows much better in the natural user experience. Also, native (video) ads that blend in with the page content yield higher engagement and are considered less intrusive.